Creating a culture of safety through employee engagement is crucial for any organization. Disengaged employees can lead to increased defects, accidents, and absenteeism, ultimately impacting productivity and growth. EHS leaders play a pivotal role in fostering engagement by providing a voice to employees, trusting them to make safe decisions, acting on feedback, and sharing data for informed choices. When employees feel valued and involved, they actively contribute to a safer work environment, driving overall safety and health improvements. Empower your workforce for a stronger safety culture and sustained organizational success.Disengaged employees can be an issue for organizations in any industry. They can hurt the bottom line or even engage in unsafe behavior on the job. When employees aren’t vested or committed to safety culture, they aren’t going to stress about their performance or the success of the company in the future. This can have a negative impact on daily operations to put workers’ safety and the company’s growth at risk.
One study shows that disengaged workers have 60% more defects and errors, 49% more accidents, and 37% higher absenteeism than engaged employees. Organizations that have lower employee engagement scores also need to contend with lower share prices, job growth, profitability, and productivity over time.
As an EHS leader, it’s important to ensure that your employees are committed to the success and work of your business. When that happens, employees are more willing to provide feedback, have fewer accidents, assist those around them, and put in a higher degree of effort. Empowering employee engagement in safety decisions is key.
Safety culture goes beyond written procedures, policies, and rules. It’s a shared value of attitudes, beliefs, and values across an organization that shapes the ways safety is prioritized and managed. It’s an important part of organizational culture since it influences day-to-day behaviors and operations.
There are several ways to promote strong employee engagement. We’ll be sharing some of the best to put in place by EHS leaders in an organization.
The first, and simplest, way to promote employee engagement is by giving a voice to your employees. This is important since these people often have the most knowledge about common risks in their work environment. They also may have thoughts about how to prevent or control those risks.
Their opinions, ideas, and feedback can help you create a well-rounded and effective safety strategy that workers are willing to follow. Having workers involved from the beginning is a good way to increase engagement and get people on your side in terms of health and safety.
EHS leaders must show their teams that they’re trusted to make safe choices when they experience risk. This is one way to empower your workers in the things they do every day. If this isn’t the case, tasks may stall as employees wait for guidance before moving forward if a risk becomes apparent.
Providing simple and clean guidelines lets employees have greater ownership of safety in the workplace. EHS leaders should have these instructions and guidelines in a central location for anyone who needs them. Workers can then quickly determine the best path to take when a risk crops up.
Providing a way for employees to share feedback is good but it’s only part of the process. You also need to read and understand the feedback before making changes based on your organizational needs. If you get feedback and ignore it, employees may wonder why they’re sharing their thoughts in the first place.
Plus, leaders need to know what issues employees are concerned about. Without that information, there’s no way to provide appropriate resources and make needed changes that can lead to a safer work environment for everyone.
When you are transparent about changes, this shows employees that you are listening and making decisions based on their concerns. Having an EHS solution that lets employees track progress can also play into this and offers information about metrics and indicators appropriate to your industry.
The final way you can improve employee engagement as it relates to safety is by making sure every worker has continuous access to all the resources they need to plan and handle their tasks. For instance, an EHS mobile app can share real-time information about risks with employees so work plans can be adjusted as needed.
In addition, having the ability to complete checklists and get authorization from supervisors digitally ensures that every person at your organization can gain access to any information they need no matter what location they are in.
Without participation from all members of a company, safety cultures cannot evolve and safety management will never reach its full potential. An engaged worker is an invested employee who will look for out the company and fellow employees’ best interests. Employee engagement shows care and consideration for the staff, which can spread through a company and provide solutions to safety and health concerns.
Workers should feel comfortable opening up to their managers and peers. This involves being able to speak openly about failures and fears without concern about unwelcome repercussions. Your organization should set the right tone for this so improvements can be made.
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